1 - "Iron Man" (2008)
Hero -- Iron Man
Villain -- Obadiah Stane, a.k.a. the Iron Monger
Arms dealer Tony Stark is in the Middle East, where he is attacked and taken captive. He builds an arc reactor to power a magnet to keep shrapnel in his heart from killing him. That reactor will later power the Iron Man suit. After escaping, Stark Becomes a superhero, which forces him to have a change of heart about selling weapons of destruction. But his mentor Stane wants this suit, his arc and him out of the company. Actually, he's the one who paid the insurgents to kill Stark in the first place. Stane, with his own iron suit, and Stark face off at the end of the film.
How it ends -- Iron Man prevails, and after Tony Stark tells the world "I am Iron Man," Nick Fury of SHIELD recruits him for the Avengers Initiative.
2 - "The Incredible Hulk" (2008)
Hero -- The Hulk
Villain -- Abomination
Scientist Bruce Banner was hit with gamma radiation, which turns him into a green, raging monster when he gets angry and his heart rate is elevated. General Ross wants this technology for the military. Banner just wants to be left alone, but is also in love with Ross' daughter Betty. Roth's character starts taking a Super Soldier serum to catch the Hulk, but takes too much and turns into an evil Hulk, known as Abomination. After Abomination starts destroying the city, Ross wants the Hulk to fight and stop him. Hulk subdues the monster and runs away to live far away from people he may hurt or kill.
How it ends -- In the post-credit scene, you see Stark run into Ross at a bar and ask about the Hulk in order to recruit him for the Avengers.
3 - "Iron Man 2" (2010)
Heroes -- Iron Man; Lt. Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes, a.k.a. War Machine and Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow
Villains -- Whiplash
Six months after his "coming out" as Iron Man, Tony Stark's superhero career has him on the top of the world, having "successfully privatized national security." However, the technology that's keeping Stark alive is also killing him. Stark does battle with the twin demons of palladium poisoning and the bottle, only to have to face Ivan Vanko/Whiplash, a Russian physicist with an axe to grind against the Stark family and a fearsome supersuit powered by a homebrew copy of Stark's arc reactor. Vanko finds a deep-pocketed ally in arms dealer Justin Hammer, and uses his resources to build a drone army to try to destroy Stark and his legacy.
How it ends -- After Iron Man and War Machine take down Whiplash, we see a hammer in the middle of the desert -- Thor is coming.
4 - "Thor" (2011)
Hero -- Thor
Villain -- Loki
Loki is jealous of his older brother Thor, who is set to become the next king of Asgard after his father Odin retires. But after an attack on his home, Thor disobeys his father and is banished to Earth, minus his powers and his hammer. While on Earth, he falls in love and learns humility. Loki also tries to kill him, but Thor regains his power and returns to Asgard to fight and conquer his misguided brother. Thor vows to watch over Earth, where Loki fell to after the final battle scene.
How it ends -- Nick Fury recruits a doctor friend of Thor's to work on alien technology -- the tesseract. But Loki is lurking in the shadows!
5 - "Captain America: The First Avenger" (2011)
Hero -- Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America
Villain -- The Red Skull
World War II has broken out and all that tiny Steve Rogers wants to do is enlist and fight the Nazis. But he's too fragile and doesn't meet requirements. So, the government experiments on him with a Super Soldier serum and it works! He's athletic, strong and ready to take down the bad guys. After he is mainly used for propaganda, he breaks command and rescues his best friend Bucky Barnes from Hydra, a Nazi-like organization also bent on taking over the world. He eventually meets and faces off against the Red Skull towards the end of the war and thwarts his plan. Bucky is presumed dead in this movie, but we later find out in "The Winter Soldier" that's not the case.
How it ends -- Cap lands his plane in frozen ice after taking the Red Skull out. He is found and thawed out 70 years later. In the post-credit scene, Nick Fury approaches Cap about a mission, now in the year 2012.
6 - "The Avengers" (2012)
Heroes -- Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye
Villain -- Loki and his alien army
Loki makes a deal to work with this alien army to take over Earth after he failed to conquer Asgard. The Avengers unite -- while bickering and fighting with each other at times -- and band together to fight Loki and this army. The catalyst is when Loki kills SHIELD's Agent Coulson, a snarky, yet lovable ally. They win and go their separate ways, vowing to protect Earth or at least "Avenge" it.
How it ends -- Manhattan is terribly damaged by the alien invasion which is ultimately foiled by the Avengers. This leads to huge public swell of opinion.
7 - "Iron Man 3" (2013)
Heroes -- Iron Man and War Machine
Villains -- The Mandarin
The Avengers’ Battle of New York has left Tony Stark wracked with PTSD. He spends his sleepless nights tinkering with a legion of armored suits in a frantic attempt to protect his one true love, Pepper; a mere “man in a can” in a dangerous new world of gods and aliens. A new threat arises closer to home, however, when the mysterious Mandarin launches a series of terror attacks, leaving Stark’s former life in ruins. Stranded without access to his suits and only his wits to rely on, Tony discovers Mandarin is merely an actor under the employ of Aldrich Killian, a scientist with a grudge against Stark, and access to the terrifying super soldier serum known as Extremis. Killian kidnaps Pepper to blackmail Tony into perfecting the deadly tech, leading to an epic showdown -- and Stark’s realization that even without his armor, he’s still Iron Man.
How it ends -- Funny scene where Stark tells Bruce Banner, a.k.a. the Hulk, his story in a therapy-like session.
8 - "Captain America: Winter Soldier" (2014)
Heroes -- Captain America, Nick Fury, Black Widow and the Falcon
Villains -- Winter Soldier and Alexander Pierce
Marvel’s red, white, and blue hero finds himself increasingly ill at ease with his employer S.H.I.E.L.D.’s shades of grey, especially after Steve Rogers discovers Project Insight: a plan to eliminate the agency’s enemies before they strike. “This isn’t freedom. This is fear,” Cap sums up to S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury – who is felled by a mysterious assassin known only as The Winter Soldier. After the agency targets Rogers, he and Black Widow go on the run, and discover Hydra has been festering inside S.H.I.E.L.D. for decades -- and that The Winter Soldier is none other than Cap’s old friend Bucky Barnes, thought killed in World War II, but brainwashed to be a triggerman for the evil group. Along with Sam Wilson AKA Falcon, former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill, and Widow, Rogers vows to burn down both Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. -- and save his former friend.
9 - "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (2015)
Heroes -- Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Vision
Villain -- Ultron
Iron Man and the gang take down Hydra and recapture Loki's scepter. But Tony uses the stone inside the weapon to create artificial intelligence, Ultron. This backfires and Ultron wages war against the Avengers and the human race. You start to see a real break in the team between Cap and Iron Man on their beliefs. They eventually take down Ultron, but at the cost of countless lives after the city of Sokovia is destroyed.
10 - "Captain America: Civil War" (2016)
Heroes -- Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Bucky Barnes, Black Panther, Ant-Man
Villain -- Baron Zemo
After another incident involving the Avengers results in collateral damage, political pressure mounts to install a system of accountability, headed by a governing body to oversee and direct the team. The new status quo fractures the Avengers, resulting in two camps, one led by Steve Rogers and his desire for the Avengers to remain free to defend humanity without government interference, and the other following Tony Stark's surprising decision to support government oversight and accountability.
It is revealed that Baron Zemo has manipulated the situation to tear the Avengers apart and villify heroes.
How It Ends: The Avengers are splintered and no longer exist as a group. Captain America, Ant-Man, Hawkeye, Bucky Barnes and Scarlet Witch are essentially on the run.
The Game As It Starts....
Times are changing. More rapidly than many would like.
In the years since Captain America became the first recognised enhanced human, the meta landscape has changed dramatically. The Avengers have been the highest profile emergence of superheroes. But for the past decade vigilantes like Moon Knight, Daredevil, Luke Cage and Iron Fist have been operating in New York alone. The exploits of Spiderman, Dr Strange and the Fantastic Four are equally well documented and this is merely a drop in the ocean. Reports of dozens, possibly hundreds of metahumans have surfaced in recent times across mainland USA, not to mention the rest of the globe.
The mutant population has exploded with half a dozen chapters and derivations of Xavier’s School being founded across the country.
However, all is not well.
After the defeat of the Chi’tauri invasion fleet in New York by the Avengers and the devastating events in Sarkovia, people are beginning to question whether the world they live in is equal parts wondrous but dangerous and tumultuous too. Indeed, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are splintered and without direction. Iron Man and Captain America himself have been at eachother’s throats for months as the governments of the world try to seize control of the situation with lines of division appear both with the populace at large and the heroes among them. Similarly, Thor and Hulk are off-world pursuing their own agendas among such equally cosmically powered individuals as Nova and Quasar and retirement has long been in the mind of former SHIELD agents like Black Widow, Nick Fury and Hawkeye.
The holes ripped in space and reality by the Asgardian God Loki during the Cht’auri event have remained open and unpredictable and through them attracted denizens of a hundred different worlds with intentions both malevolent and benign.
In this era of the extraordinary and the unnerving we find our burgeoning heroes. Without SHIELD or the Avengers, and with little clue of how to handle the increasing numbers of both metahumans, extraterrestrials and villains – as powerful as the heroes who oppose them – people are nervous and in this maelstrom of powered individuals and global agendas, those who seek to make a difference, start to make their way in the world.
